Chasing the White Birdie

The spring snow goose season is quite like nothing else because of the vast number of birds that can come into your decoys. Snow geese are some of the toughest birds to hunt and decoy which makes getting them in over the decoys even more rewarding. Being able to capture the scene is even better.

 

I shot with the D90 this spring and had either the 12-24mm or 24-120mm lense on it while shooting from my layout blind or on a tripod. When on a tripod, I used the Vello FreeWave Wireless remote control to activate the shutter on my camera. I kept the camera in aperture mode with f7.1 – f11 being the most common settings with an ISO range of 200-800 depending on light. To be able to adjust the photographs in a wide variety of ways, I shot in RAW.

 

In ViewNX, I adjusted the white balance, picture control, exposure compensation and highlight/shadow sliders to process the images. Direct sunlight, shade or cloudy white balance settings were used along with nature-landscape on the picture control. To adjust the exposure, the highlight/shadow sliders along with the exposure compensation were used.  I also used HDR on select images so made -1, -.5, 0, +.5 & +1.0 exposure compensation adjustments to make multiple exposed images to put into Easy HDR.

 

Because of my computer crash, I had to revert back to using PSE 10 to do the final adjustments on the images. The main tools for this were: clone brush, layer mask and high pass filter. I used the clone brush to clone out unwanted objects in the images. Layer masks were used with the brush tool to mix different images together or put a certain effect on different areas of the image. The high pass filter was used to sharpen the image as the final step.

 

I was able to spend 20 days hunting snows this spring and had a couple of hunts that will stand out because of the images I was able to capture. One of those hunts, the sun was right behind me and the camera with blue skies in front of me which allowed for a great scene. Especially when I had a large amount of snow geese come right in on me!

 

With the hunting equipment put away for another season, it is time to turn my eyes towards flowers, farm, golf course and Lake scenes.

 

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2013 Waterfowl Season Captures by the D90

After the end of the goose season, I unfortunately ran into computer problems and had my hard drive crash on my XPS laptop. Luckily, I had these images on external hard drives so did not lose them from the season. With the hard drive crashing, I got out of my usual winter photography habits so just getting to post these.

Last fall, I purchased a Vello FreeWave wireless remote that allowed me to have a video screen inside the blind with me and be able to see what my camera was seeing as birds flew into the decoys. With this new remote, I put my camera behind the blinds for the majority of the season.

With either the camera in the blind with me, or out on a tripod with the Vello FreeWave hooked too it, I used the 12-24mm, 18-105mm and 24-120mm lense on it. The camera was set to Aperture mode and RAW format. I varied the aperture and ISO based on light.

Once in ViewNX, I did the usually adjustment of exposure, white balance and picture control. Daylight and Cloudy white balance settings were used and Nature-Landscape for the picture control setting. Highlight/Shadow slider was also adjusted if needed.

In PSE11, I did the final adjustments and also played with some filters to change the look of the images. The clone & healing brush was used to get rid of unwanted objects in the images as well.

The 2013 season was a great one and I look forward to the spring with a chance to chase snow geese and capture the images of the hunt while also waiting for new flowers to bloom.

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